Emirates Will Not Invest in Qantas – CCO

A passenger walks past a Qantas Airways emblem at the Sydney International Airport terminal July 18, 2014. Australia's Qantas Airways said on Friday it had shifted the flight path for its London to Dubai route over Ukraine some 400 nautical miles to the south several months ago. A Malaysian airliner was brought down in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, killing all 298 people on board. REUTERS/David Gray (AUSTRALIA - Tags: TRANSPORT DISASTER BUSINESS LOGO POLITICS)

The chief commercial officer (CCO) of Dubai-based Airline Emirates has flatly denied it has ambitions to invest in the international operations of Australia's Qantas Airways.

The debt-battered Australian carrier earlier floated a proposed new corporate structure for its international operations meant to open itself to further investment.

Aviation experts said Emirates could be interested in taking a stake. This theory was immediately doused by Thierry Antinori, Emirates' CCO.

He said buying shares is not part and parcel of the airline's strategy.

"We buy planes and invest in products; we do not buy shares," he told Reuters.

Qantas' proposed new corporate structure would enable a foreign airline to control as much as 49 per cent of Qantas international. The prevailing limit is set at 35 per cent.

Neil Hansford, the chairman of aviation consultancy Strategic Aviation Solutions, believes that Qantas would have a hard time looking for investors because of its financial status.

Another aviation analyst told Australian Aviation that Qantas' alliance with Emirates may pose a hindrance to any foreign airline planning to invest in the Flying Kangaroo.

"The relationship with Emirates is pretty much the poison pill for anybody else to buy into Qantas International I would have thought," the unnamed analyst said.

Under their partnership, Qantas moved its European operations base to Dubai from Singapore, while Emirates allowed Qantas share its new terminal, supposedly for the exclusive use of its Airbus A380.

The world's biggest operator of the A380, Emirates has 51 of those in service and another 89 on order.

Meantime, analysts and aviation experts remain wary over Qantas' new international company. They are questioning if the new firm will have its own Air Operator's Certificate and will it be publicly listed.